


With Wings We Fly

by orphan_account



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Alternate Universe - Wings, Angel Wings, Cults, Gen, Inspired by Studio Ghibli, Military, On Your Mark, Science Fiction, Wings, all of these tags look ridiculous together, angel keith, cannibals, winged keith
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-17 22:02:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13086261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Lance and Pidge have been a team through all of their work as officers of the law. The day comes, though, when the training wheels are off, and Lance has to cope with the side effects of killing a person for the first time—he doesn't think he can do it again, even as they prepare to infiltrate cult territory.But, had he not gone on this mission, he never would have met the winged anomaly by the name Keith. So for that, he's grateful.





	With Wings We Fly

**Author's Note:**

> Fair warning: Mentions of cannibalism, nothing explicit, and there isn't much romance—it's based on the Studio Ghibli short film **On Your Mark**.

Lance Álvarez was an optimist—his mother made sure of it. However, he was a misinformed cynic—he knew the world was bad, he just… hadn’t experienced it’s dark side yet. He wanted to help people see the world as he did. He didn’t want to be ignorant, and he didn’t want other people to be ignorant of the worst things in life, but he wanted to prevent them from experiencing it firsthand in any way he could. He would do anything he could to save people from hardships, and so ever since he was small, he wanted to be an officer of the law.

His cynicism didn’t glance over the flaws in the system—and _boy_ were there flaws—so he knew what he was getting into. He knew he’d see horrible things, do horrible things, but it was all for his cause and so he couldn’t overlook his orders when they were assigned to him and his partner. 

After the brief, Lance expected Pidge to give him something other than a flat look when he said, “Are they serious?”

“What do you expect?” she said. “This is borderline post-apocalyptic shit. As if we haven’t had enough to deal with in the New Regulation. People like the Galra should be expecting this more so than anything else. As if we’d give them all tickets and a slap on the wrist for _cultish cannibalism_.”

Lance rolled his eyes. No shit, he wasn’t on board with the idea of cannibalism. He was equally upset by the idea of an organized annihilation of an entire group of people. There was no sugarcoating it—they’d be participating in a small-scale genocide.

“Right, but I don’t exactly feel comfortable killing people even if they are,” he insisted, lowering his voice as a group of people left the briefing room. “In case you don’t remember what happened the last time I had to shoot someone.”

“You made it out fine, otherwise they wouldn’t have assigned you to this case. And that was an incredible shot to begin with? You should be proud,” she said, and Lance’s shock punctuated the end of their conversation.

Pidge walked off down the corridor, leaving Lance to reassemble himself and clamp his mouth shut in the process. Sometimes he forgot how differently he and Pidge thought. She viewed work like work while Lance viewed work like volunteering. He was doing this because he wanted to make the world a better place, and she was doing this because she had to. That was the biggest difference between them, but what brought them together was how stellar they were as a team. She was overall an incredible partner, and despite Lance’s humbleness, he had to admit to his incredible scores and history on the force.

They exited the building in the same place they would stand the following day, dressed in their uniforms fit for war. The city spread out off of the rooftop, and the constant roar and hum of the commotion reminded Lance a lot of the world outside the layers of buildings. If he closed his eyes, he could trick himself into believing that he was in a massive cavern on a windy day. Instead of cavern walls, though, he was surrounded by towering structures of neon lights and skyscraper windows. Peering down from the rooftop would only serve to show the immense height they were at, and how it swelled in Lance’s chest the way thin air often does.

With a shaky breath, he strapped on his helmet and turned to the hovercraft he and Pidge shared. She reached over and grabbed him by the hand, easing him up and through the door. 

“Enough dillydally! Let’s get to it!” she shouted above the roar of their comrades starting up their vehicles. 

Lance powered up the hovercraft and lifted them off with the smooth accuracy of a well-trained pilot. Of the two of them, Lance was assigned as the designated driver (unfortunately, yes, even on their days off. He wasn’t one for drinking) while Pidge dealt with communications and the overall badassery that Lance wasn’t capable of. She was killer at hand-to-hand combat, which was why they were at the forefront of the hovercrafts being dispatched to all entrances of the building the Galra owned. The front of the building glared at them as they pulled up fast, following the crash that burst open the front wall of the domed center. The neon sign flickered out, but Lance didn’t have time to see what it was before they were crashing in through the gaping hole in the concrete.

Pidge flung her door up and swung out with one hand holding her gun, and the other clenched in a fist that knocked out the first red-hooded figure she saw. She clobbered the man with the butt of her gun and stepped over his body with a prowl to her steps. She lifted her arm up, aimed, and shot the nearest man running at her with knife. His red robes splattered with blood as he collapsed among the rubble, and the future bodies that would drop as the officers crawled the area and took out any and all cult members they saw.

_The world isn’t what it used to be_ , Lance thought as he stepped out of the hovercraft and stopped at the sight of the cultish clothes littering the floor. Just because each day was a brand new world to them didn’t mean they were allowed to forget the past, or the fact that the robes were topped with pointed hoods. All they were missing was the color white, but the blood of their victims would show up easily on that.

No need to flaunt it when everyone already knew they were cannibals.

Pidge shouted his name, and he looked up in time to see one of their partners go down under the bullet of a sniper from the balcony. Instinct brought Lance’s rifle up, and he only hesitated as long as it took for Pidge to finally shout, “ _Do it!_ ” He pulled the trigger and took out the sniper, and he told himself it was to prevent another one of his partners from being caught under the scope. 

The leader of their troop split them up. Lance and Pidge advanced to a separate room, clearing out what remained of the cultists who tried to escape the slaughter. After the third shot, Lance was so unwound that he turned numb. He forced himself into the mindset of a video game like Pidge told him to do the last time he had to kill someone. The price of protecting people from people.

“All clear,” Pidge relayed into her com unit. An affirmative came back from several of the other pairs before the entire troop regrouped with the second wave of officers come to check the bodies. 

Their troop leader’s voice broke through the chaos of hovercrafts touching down. “Pidge—Lance—Southeast stairwell.”

“On it,” Lance said, grateful that his voice didn’t waver as he led the way to the back exit door. There were marks on the concrete where bullets missed their targets and hit the walls instead. He ran his gloved finger of one before disappearing around the dented doorframe with Pidge in tow.

Their boots echoed down the rickety metal staircase before they were caught by the hiss of a silenced gun aiming for them. The bullet ricocheted up the stairwell as both Lance and Pidge ducked before reflexively aiming for the shooter. Pidge took him out before Lance could get the chance to.

He aimed for the man’s partner, but his handgun was out of ammunition. “ _Fuck_ ,” he hissed, clapping it against his hand before running him and slamming it into the man’s skull. The guy went down, and Pidge took the killing shot. 

The room was filled with barrels upon barrels stacked on top of each other to the ceiling. Pidge took a nearby crowbar to crank one open against Lance’s insistent calls for her not to. A putrid scent washed over the room, and they both groaned at it. “ _Yuck_ , okay, you were right, bad idea,” Pidge said, coughing. Curiosity got the best of her, though, and as Lance disappeared around the corner, she peered into the barrel. Through the milky liquid, she could see the color of dark skin beneath the surface.

She put the lid back on slowly. “Okay… so not looking in there. Great. Lance? Where’d you go?”

“This way!” he called out, and hoped his voice carried well enough for her to follow.

Their boots echoed along with the sound of sirens leaking through the walls and ceiling. A particularly loud crash caused Lance to hesitate, and hold his hand out to Pidge, who looked up in time to see a bit of the wall nearby crumble. The rubble clanked from one tier of metal canister to the next before eventually rolling into Lance’s steel-toed boot. “The building’s infrastructure probably hates us for crashing a hole through its ceiling,” he commented, and Pidge laughed, shoving him along and continuing down their trek to the far back of this dim floor.

The lights near them failed. 

Pidge turned on her flashlight for the remainder of the walk to the last spot of light at the end of the hall. The corridor opened up into a narrow room, framed by those metal chemical barrels. There was a body laying on the ground, blood just as red as the warning signs on the barrels. Something… white and _wet_ was clumped on the ground beside the dead body, and Lance nearly kicked it before it stirred on its own.

“Jesus,” he hissed, stumbling away from it as the flecks of white clumps rustled and shook out the moisture. Pidge hoisted her gun up, but lowered it the moment they recognized the wings of a bird unraveling—

—to reveal a human face with wide, terrified eyes. 

“What the fuck…” Pidge breathed, looking at Lance to make sure he was seeing the same thing as she was. “What do we do?” she hissed at him, and just then, orders came through their headphones, unrelated to the man with wings lying crouched on the concrete.

Lance held his finger up to his mouth, insisted Pidge keep quiet about this. She looked at the man again, and then the dead body before reporting back to their superior: “All clear down here, sir.”

Lance hefted the dead body away as Pidge went to the winged man. Lance jumped at the sound of him all but shrieking, “Don’t touch me!”

“Whoa, hey, not gonna hurt you,” Pidge said. She held her gloved hands up as the man flattened himself against the wall. The yellowish lights glinted on the metal charm hung around his neck, and Pidge slowly reached for it. She recognized the letters, and after focusing on them for a moment, she was able to decipher the language. “His name is… it’s basically the equivalent of ‘Keith,’” she told Lance, lowering the charm back down onto the fabric of Keith’s white shirt.

“That’s great, but can we get a move on?” he asked worriedly.

“I can’t—he’s chained. Check that guy’s pocket for keys,” she demanded, pointing to the dead body Lance just moved away. He cursed, rolling his eyes as he crouched back down and started rooting around in the man’s blood-soaked robes. 

His fingers brushed something metallic, and sure enough, it was a ring of keys. He tossed them to Pidge, who gingerly pulled Keith’s foot farther out so that she could unlock it. Lance came over and tried not to stare too hard at the red staining the man’s soft hands, or the stains from where he rubbed the blood off on his white shirt. Keith’s purplish eyes watched him, even as Lance turned away in uncertainty. 

“Come on—let’s get moving,” Lance said, snapping his fingers the instant the chains fell from Keith’s ankles and wrists. Pidge helped Keith up, but they didn’t get much farther than a single step. Keith was paler than his white shirt, and stumbled before either of them could think to stop him. 

He grabbed instinctively for the nearest object—Pidge’s arm, and then Lance’s shoulder, and together the two of them held him up. They shared a look before Pidge said, “You’re the one who lifts every goddamn day.”

“You’re kidding,” Lance groaned, but in the next moment, Pidge forced him to crouch so that Keith could all but fall onto his back. He linked his arms around Lance’s neck, and those tufts of white feathers tickled Lance’s cheeks. There was no way in hell they were going to be able to keep this from their superior if they didn’t move quick. 

Keith linked his ankles around Lance’s waist like a koala, and gathered the strength to hold on tight. “Alright then—here we go,” Lance sighed, using everything in his power to ignore the sensation of Keith’s feathers blanketing him in their fluffy embrace. They didn’t make a sound—not even a rustle—as Lance took off jogging down the corridor with Pidge leading the way. She cleared barrels out of the way so Lance could get through with the new width of Keith’s wings. As they climbed the metal stairwell, they caught the sudden waft of hot, stale air. Pidge held the back of her hand to her mouth to keep from gagging, saying, “We’ve got to cover his wings up if we’re really doing this.”

“We’re really doing this,” Lance said. “Grab one of the cult robes.”

“Are you serious? Dead giveaway.”

“Ha-ha, very funny,” he laughed sarcastically. Pidge rolled her eyes as she grabbed one of their victims on the stairwell and ripped the cloak off of him. 

She started to heft it over Lance’s shoulders when Keith squeaked, practically choking Lance with the way he tensed up. “Just for a minute,” she reassured him. “Tuck your, um, tuck your wings in—there we go…” 

Lance reached up and loosened Keith’s grasp a bit so that he could breathe. He could feel the guy _shaking_ like a stray dog, and he didn’t let up even as they reached the top floor and hurried across the floor of soldiers checking the bodies. Lance tried his best to look innocent, but that was fucking impossible when he was carrying a body covered in cult robes. Pidge all but pushed him to their hovercraft and shoved the door open. Lance tipped backwards against the seat, urging Keith to drop his arms and legs from around him. It took some prying, and by then, the robes fell, and someone just _had_ to look their way.

“What the fuck is that?” one of the soldiers asked from behind Pidge and Lance.

Pidge turned in alarm, staring wide-eyed at the man as he said, “Is that—does that kid have _wing—_ ” She did the first thing she could think of and swung the butt of her gun into the side of the man’s head. Lance didn’t even question it—this day had been weird enough, and the instant their hovercraft would go off course, the comm security would be sending soldiers after them anyways. So he didn’t question it—he knew they’d be in trouble regardless of what they did now.

“Go, go, go,” Pidge hissed, swinging over the front of the craft and flung her body into her seat. They slammed their doors shut, kicked off, and dropped from the building ledge.

Their craft plummeted and curved. They coasted around the base of the building where it stood among raised streets and road systems. Lance arced over a passing car and dropped off the edge of the guard railing. All the while, he and Pidge bickered over Keith’s ruffled feathers, and the fact that he was clinging so tightly to their arms that his nails created crescent-shaped divots through their uniforms. For a guy with wings, he definitely wasn’t used to flying.

“Well, first off—we can’t use a hovercraft outside of the city,” Pidge said. “The grid doesn’t go past those industrial fields, ya know.”

“My car’s back at the station—”

“Yeah, and lemme guess—your keys are in your locker,” Pidge said. Lance let out a distressed groan. “Let’s just hope that soldier didn’t know our names and let’s head to the station then. Drop Keith and I off in the parking lot.”

Lance turned their hovercraft to the sky. The edges of the buildings became their road, helping them navigate vertigo and push through the clouds. They emerged in a spiral of grey and white tufts like wings that carried them over the transport lines and bridges. The moment the white fog fella way from the window, Keith’s grasp on them faded, and he turned to look out Pidge’s window at the marvelous neon lights, and the iridescent solar-paneled windows on all of the buildings from this height. As the hovercraft slowed, Lance twisted it around so that Pidge’s door opened up to the parking garage ledge.

Pidge stood out on the ledge, her ginger hair whipping in the wind of the hovercraft’s fans as she reached for Keith’s hand. Keith grabbed hold and jumped out, swaying on shaky legs as Pidge held onto him and reached out to slam the passenger door. Lance saluted them, and let the hovercraft drop and spin between the roads. Keith stared down after him until Pidge urged him off from the ledge. 

They stood together at that opening in the parking garage while Keith watched the city and cars go by. Pidge disconnected her comm unit from her helmet and laid it on the concrete, saying, “So, Keith, what’s your story?” 

“My… story?” he said, frowning at her.

She raised her eyebrows and gestured wildly at him. “The wings, buddy—what’s with the wings?”

“Oh,” he hummed, lowered one arm so that he could comb his fingers absently through his dormant feathers. He hadn’t felt them in several days—not since… He rubbed at the sores on his wrists from the chains. “I don’t remember.”

Pidge gave him a skeptical look before turning to the side and letting it go. She couldn’t force Keith to talk, especially after everything that likely happened to him. He walked off before she could apologize for saying anything. She followed him, though, to keep an eye on him, and they remained in relative silence as they passed through vibrant neon lights that leaked in through the parking garage archways. Keith stopped to stare up at an advertisement sign across the way, and around that time, Lance came to retrieve them. His car pulled up the ramp and breaked on the corner. It was a convertible, something that was totally Lance, in Pidge’s opinion anyway. He treated that car like his own child, and so it was sleek and polished, and looked as though he drove it straight out of the car dealership.

Keith didn’t exactly have the taste for cars, and so he didn’t think twice when it came to climbing into the back seat with his wings rustling behind him. He shook his shoulders out, and stretched them out so far, his wingspan lifted out from the size of the vehicle. Lance raised his eyebrows through the rearview mirror, and looked back just as Keith settled his wings back in, and revealed the fact that there was a mother and her child standing far behind with their jaws practically on the ground.

“Well—time to go,” Lance declared, laughing as he cruised away, and left their witnesses in the dust.

Pidge hollered out in excitement, and her yells echoed through the garage behind them. They all but soared over the speed bumps, and Keith clung to the door nearest him to keep from flying out. He felt the wind buffeting in his wings, and it took all his self-control to keep from stretching them wide, and letting the air carry him away.

Lance sent the convertible careening around the corner, emerging from the garage with the speed of a race car. The road tipped them downwards, towards the long descent to the ground where they could hear police sirens up above through the clouds, and the hovercrafts returning from the Galra headquarters. They were all moving away from them, and Keith stared up at them and watched as they all disappeared in a gust through the clouds high overhead. 

They were in the clear.

 

* * *

 

Keith’s life consisted of islands. His memories were scattered between great expanses of water he could never cross without exhausting every speck of energy within him, and so he never bothered to leave The Present Moment. Each moment of sleep seemed to pass on for days rather than hours, and then The Past was just never returned to. And, so, as he let himself release the moments from just a few hours prior, he spread his arms to the great blue sky beyond the city limits.

The moment he stood in the back of the car, he heard the girl’s laughter lift up from the passenger’s seat with him, reaching for his hand to keep him grounded. “Lance! Lance, let him fly!” Pidge said.

“ _What?_ What’s _that_ supposed to—”

“Give me the wheel!” Pidge demanded, pushing into Lance’s seat and sending the car swerving, slowing on the empty country road before they were finally able to swap seats. Pidge pushed the petal to the floor, and sent Keith stumbling back into his seat with a shout of surprise. Lance steadied him, reaching both hands out for Keith to hold onto and keep him grounded in the car.

They cruised through the countryside. Rolling hills of barley curled like ocean waves that rose on either side of them. The road parted between them, coasting along and urging the wind to ripple through Keith’s feathers. It teased them, tickling his wings all the way to his shoulder blades where he felt the urge to fly stronger than ever. He let his wings unfurl.

The wind jolted him, and he grabbed hold of Lance’s wrists, terrified of being dragged away by the wind. Lance shouted something to Pidge, and the car slowed slightly, testing the weight of the air pushing into Keith, and lifting his feet from the car. He swayed with the breeze, coasting towards the side of it. Lance followed him, and Keith focused on his brilliant smile stretching wider with every moment Keith spent suspended in the air beside their car.

Lance released one hand, raising up as high as he could so that Keith could feel as though he was flying without training wheels. Keith flapped his wings experimentally, and the strength of it sent him coasting higher, his fingers trailing between Lance’s until they separated entirely. 

Keith wobbled in the air, flinging his arms out to steady his balance. He beat his wings harder, gliding along the current that whisked him alongside the car. His heart was fluttering as fast as his wings were, speeding up, and pushing him over the fences on the fields, and up high over the car. He twisted to the side, and flipped in the air, laughing at the high of being one with the sky. A familiar sensation of deja vu carried him on, reminding him that in some other life, he must have soared through these fields before.

He lost sight of everything, and disappeared in the white clouds before Lance could think to shout, “Farewell!” Lance stared out after Keith, his back to the road ahead. The city started to fade away as Pidge carried the convertible down a steep hill, and closer towards Lance’s childhood home. It was the best place they could think of if Keith decided to stick around. But… they couldn’t keep wings chained like the Galra did.

Lance dropped back down with a sigh, and didn’t realize he was smiling until he looked at Pidge, and found her grinning like an idiot. 

“Now _that’s_ what I call a jailbreak!” Pidge shouted, hammering her hands on the wheel as Lance threw his head back laughing.

Lance lifted his hand up to her. “Here’s to hoping we’ve still got jobs when we head back to work tomorrow.” 

They bumped fists.

 

* * *

  

It’s impossible for Lance to forget the day he forgot how to feel remorse for the irredeemable. Saving Keith told him that everything about that day was exactly as it should have been. He didn’t know what would have happened to Keith had he and Pidge not found him. Some nights, he dreamt of scientific experiments, of gun holes replacing Keith’s eyes, of his beautiful white wings stamped into the dirt. But some nights, he dreamt of Keith in a place Lance’s family was sure existed, be he never believed in. 

But… it became easier and easier for Lance to think of Keith’s wings as something he concocted through all of those nightmares. He and Pidge never talked about that night, despite the fact that they both continued to think about it, even years later. He never thought to compare their memories until one weekend he used to visit his parents, and took Pidge with him. 

They were making dinner together when Lance asked, “Do you remember that time we shut down the Galra headquarters?”

“Pff, duh, of course I do,” she snorted. “I talked about it so much, I’m sure it’s the reason my girlfriend and I broke up.”

“You _do_ have a habit of repeating things you love to talk about…”

Pidge slapped him with a tortilla before dropping it in the skillet where it sizzled and was topped with cheese and peppers. 

“Do you remember… anything weird about it?” he asked, and Pidge thought for a moment.

She hummed, tipping her head to the side as she said, “Aside from, you know, finding a guy chained to the concrete?”

“Yeah…”

“My ex insists I was raving about an angel or something. Why? Do you remember that?” she asked, and went on before Lance could say anything. “It’s been bothering me lately. Why would I talk about angels? I never believed in that sort of stuff.”

“I don’t know. Maybe he was one,” Lance offered, and they looked at one another from across his parent’s kitchen, and laughed.

They went on with the night like any other weekend Pidge spent with the Alvarez’. They ate, played card games, and ended the night with a movie in the family room. And, as Lance tried not to drift off, his attention went to the window beside the television, and wondered if he saw something white standing beyond the backyard fence.

Lance stood up and went to the kitchen to get a glass of water, and grabbed his uniform belt on his way to the patio. He stepped off the deck and squinted out into the dark beyond the patio lights. There wasn’t much of anything out this far in the countryside, so Lance convinced himself of this and turned to head back inside when he heard a faint—

“Wait—!”

Lance looked back out towards the fencing. He abandoned his water at the deck and hurried down the steps in the direction of where he heard the voice, and watched the familiar figure fade into focus from the other side of the fencing. It may have been a year, but Lance would recognize that face anywhere. Somehow, he was always looking to find Keith on the streets, but that was impossible with the man could barely blend in—not with those wings.

“Keith! What are you doing here?” Lance said. “I thought you…?”

“I got lost,” he confessed, his voice hesitant and quiet. Later, Lance would wonder if he heard anything correctly, but in the moment, he couldn’t help but laugh. 

“Lost for a year? Wow, that detour must have been a trip.”

“I actually need to get going,” Keith admitted, leaning up to the fence as Lance tried to convince him otherwise. “I wanted to say thank you. Tell your friend Pidge the same for me, okay?”

Lance nodded mutely. Keith bounded up, leaning over the fence just far enough to press a chaste kiss to the corner of Lance’s mouth. He hurried away on bare feet, and spared a single glance back before his wings kicked him off and sent him towards the musty clouds covering the moon. His wings blended in with the moon’s glow, and in the next moment, Keith completely faded away.

Lance lifted a hand to his mouth, and was reminded of that day he stood on the passenger seat of his car, staring after Keith’s disappearing form. Only, with the imprint of Keith’s lips on his, he was determined never to forget it. Perhaps that was all he needed in order to remember. 


End file.
